There
are times when certain aspects of life strike us more. In one week
you meet or hear of several people who have moved house, or had injuries,
or contracted cancer. In the last week I have heard of a lot of friends
and acquaintances who have had big troubles to bear. I also came across
the Buddhist story of Kisagotami that throws useful light on dealing
with such situations.

Kisagotami
was a young woman whose first child died suddenly when just one year
old. Desperate in her love for her child she went from house to house
in her village, clasping her dead child to her breast, asking for
a medicine to revive her child. Eventually, she was directed to the
Buddha as the only one who could help her. "Yes," he said,
"I can make that medicine for you but first I will need a handful
of mustard seed from a house where no child, parent, husband or servant
has died."
Slowly, as she went from house to house and heard why her neighbors
could not give what she asked for, Kisagotami came to see that hers
was not a unique predicament. She put the body of her child down in
the forest and returned to the Buddha. "I have not brought the
mustard seed," she told him, "the people of the village
told me, 'The living are few but the dead are many.'" The Buddha
replied, "You thought that you alone had lost a son: the law
of death is that among all living creatures there is no permanence."

Kisatogami's
story resonates, not just because of our sympathy for the horror of
losing a child or because of the fear of a world in which such tragedy
is possible but because we all, like her, feel that our situation
is unique and that our emotional pain requires relief. In the privacy
of our own minds we are aggrieved and totally self-centered. We are
saying it is unfair that this should happen to ME.

The
most significant line of the story for me was when she lay the body
of her child down in the forest. The Buddha did not give her a way
of satisfying her primal emotions of love towards her child. He helped
her to find happiness, not by bringing the child back to life, but
by changing her view of herself. He helped her to move beyond the
private childish perspective of "why me" that we all indignantly
harbor.
The paralytic in today's Gospel was probably a very hurt man, a paralyzed
man, inside also. He too probably asked the question WHY ME? But he
had friends who were willing to do something. They would bring him
to Jesus the healer. When they got there, so many other wounded people
were seeking him that they had to take the man up on to the roof to
let him down before Jesus. In our story Jesus healed the man, but
like the Buddha Jesus was more concerned about curing the attitudes
in the man's heart. Jesus set him free to see reality in a new way.

We
can have one level of prayer where we seek to be set free externally.
That is quite human and legitimate. But there can be another form
of prayer that opens us to acceptance of all that comes from God and
frees us inside so that we can live more full lives. This way of prayer
is meditation. Being still with the prayer word, we very gently get
into the transforming stream of the divine wisdom who dwells in our
hearts.